All laboratory carries out development of chromatographic fingerprinting methods using HPTLC, HPLC, GC, LCMSMS and GC MS for single herb and poly herbal formulations. We also support our clients with the routine chromatographic fingerprinting for the identification and quality control of the herbal ingredients and finished products

Chromatographic fingerprinting techniques are playing an ever more important role in the standardisation of herbal products. They are being used for confirming the presence of different herbs in poly herbal formulations as well as the quantification of marker compounds.

Though HPLC and GC are also widely used for chromatographic fingerprinting HPTLC has been the forerunner for chromatographic fingerprinting of single log and poly herbal formulations.

Chromatographic fingerprinting is used for both establishing the identity and quality of the single herbs being added into herbal formulation .

Nowadays chromatographic fingerprinting is used at two stages during the manufacture of a herbal formulation. First fingerprinting is carried out for each of the herbs being added to the formulation. This is used for identifying the herb as well as it can be used simultaneously to quantify the major active ingredients present in the herb.

Once the identity and purity of the herb is established all the herbs are incorporated in suitably processed to produce the final poly herbal formulation. At this time a chromatographic fingerprint of the poly herbal formulation is developed using achromatographic system which can produce characteristic peaks for each of the herbs used in an herbal formulation.

These fingerprints help in ensuring the presence of all the claimed herbs in poly herbal formulations. If during the manufacturing process even a single herb is missed out it can be detected by the absence of one of the characteristic speaks in the chromatographic fingerprint.

This approach has helped to solve one of the biggest challenges of verifying the label came present on the product. In fact a well-developed chromatographic fingerprint can even help in quantifying the individual herbs present in the formulation.

Other than chromatographic fingerprints nowadays even DNA fingerprinting is being used for this very application.

Along with chromatographic fingerprinting for all the herbs it is now standard practice to quantify at least one active ingredient in the formulation. So say we have a product which has a number of ingredients and the major ingredient Haldi, in such a product it would be a good idea to quantify the levels of curcumin from batch to batch